“What am I to say to him?” thought Yevgeny Petrovitch.  “He’s not listening to me.  Obviously he does not regard either his misdoings or my arguments as serious.  How am I to drive it home?”

The prosecutor got up and walked about the study.

“Formerly, in my time, these questions were very simply settled,” he reflected.  “Every urchin who was caught smoking was thrashed.  The cowardly and faint-hearted did actually give up smoking, any who were somewhat more plucky and intelligent, after the thrashing took to carrying tobacco in the legs of their boots, and smoking in the barn.  When they were caught in the barn and thrashed again, they would go away to smoke by the river . . . and so on, till the boy grew up.  My mother used to give me money and sweets not to smoke.  Now that method is looked upon as worthless and immoral.  The modern teacher, taking his stand on logic, tries to make the child form good principles, not from fear, nor from desire for distinction or reward, but consciously.”

While he was walking about, thinking, Seryozha climbed up with his legs on a chair sideways to the table, and began drawing.  That he might not spoil official paper nor touch the ink, a heap of half-sheets, cut on purpose for him, lay on the table together with a blue pencil.

“Cook was chopping up cabbage to-day and she cut her finger,” he said, drawing a little house and moving his eyebrows.  “She gave such a scream that we were all frightened and ran into the kitchen.  Stupid thing!  Natalya Semyonovna told her to dip her finger in cold water, but she sucked it . . .  And how could she put a dirty finger in her mouth!  That’s not proper, you know, papa!”

Then he went on to describe how, while they were having dinner, a man with a hurdy-gurdy had come into the yard with a little girl, who had danced and sung to the music.

“He has his own train of thought!” thought the prosecutor.  “He has a little world of his own in his head, and he has his own ideas of what is important and unimportant.  To gain possession of his attention, it’s not enough to imitate his language, one must also be able to think in the way he does.  He would understand me perfectly if I really were sorry for the loss of the tobacco, if I felt injured and cried. . . .  That’s why no one can take the place of a mother in bringing up a child, because she can feel, cry, and laugh together with the child.  One can do nothing by logic and morality.  What more shall I say to him?  What?”

And it struck Yevgeny Petrovitch as strange and absurd that he, an experienced advocate, who spent half his life in the practice of reducing people to silence, forestalling what they had to say, and punishing them, was completely at a loss and did not know what to say to the boy.

“I say, give me your word of honour that you won’t smoke again,” he said.

“Word of hon-nour!” carolled Seryozha, pressing hard on the pencil and bending over the drawing.  “Word of hon-nour!”